Where was your photo taken: Just across the Canadian border on the Chilkoot Trail. It’s an international hiking trail that traces the historic route taken by stampeders during the Klondike Gold Rush, from Southeast Alaska into the Yukon.

Where do you live now: Whitehorse, Yukon

Scariest airline flown: I’ve never had any seriously dodgy flying experiences, but I have – twice – tried and failed to fly with Ryanair. Scariest airline? I’ll go with the one that – twice! – canceled my flight on a few hours’ notice and left me grounded, with no refund and no re-booking. I know they say you get what you pay for, but I figured even a dirt-cheap flight should still involve, you know, a flight.

Favorite city/country/place: Good old New York, New York. You just can’t beat it.Most remote corner of the globe visited: Tuktoyaktuk, a village on the shore of the Arctic Ocean in Canada’s Northwest Territories. I drove there by ice road a couple of winters back, and when the time came to hit the gas station (priciest. gas. ever.) and head back south I had to stand in line behind a bunch of 12 year-olds filling up their skidoos.

Favorite guidebook series: Lonely Planet. It’s let me down here and there, and for really specific destination information I might go elsewhere, but it’s still my go-to most of the time.

Favorite travel author: I’m a longtime Jan Morris fan – I don’t think there’s anybody else who can capture the essence, the real spirit, of a place in a few paragraphs like she can. Recently I’ve also been wowed by Jonathan Raban.

Worst hotel experience: A nameless $30/night joint on the outskirts of Augusta, Georgia. My key kept sticking, so a helpful neighbor who’d been living in the room next door “since my wife left me” showed me how to jimmy the lock. Then the power went out. Then a mouse hopped up on the bed and ran across my pillow. I wound up sleeping in the car.

How did you get started traveling? I never actually left Canada until I was 19, when I went to Acapulco for a high school grad trip. Then, a few months later, my dad moved to Malaysia. I visited him every year and started doing solo trips around the region after I’d gotten my fill of family time – and I was hooked.

When I’m not writing for Gadling, I’m… Freelancing for a mix of newspaper, magazine and online. I’m also settling into life in Whitehorse: home brewing, hiking, getting overly competitive at pub trivia and playing outside whenever I can.